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Microsoft Expression vs. Dreamweaver
An anonymous reader writes "Informit has a quick look at Microsoft's Expression suite consisting of Graphic Designer, Interactive Designer, and Web Designer in comparison to Dreamweaver. It seems that Microsoft got tired of relying on FrontPage and is actually going after professionals. From the article: 'What designers might not realize is that Microsoft finally drank the Kool-Aid. The Expression Web Designer application walks the Web standards walk. One caution: Web Designer currently only supports ASP.NET. Microsoft built the ASP.NET platform; it isn't a surprise that Expression Web Designer was designed to support that platform. This is obviously a drawback for those designers who work with PHP, JSP, and other non-ASP.NET platforms, making it difficult for Microsoft to expand its reach beyond the ASP.NET users.'"
As a long time dreamweaver user (Since 4.0), I tried Expression web designer last week and really like it. The interface is better laid out than Dreamweaver and it has a really great HTML View (where I spend most of my time). The css support is also top notch.
ASP.NET really has nothing to do with this editor. Its focused on HTML and CSS. If you are an ASP.NET developer, it will let you drop in server controls and thats about. You'd be crazy to use this instead of Visual Studio.NET for real coding. This is purely an HTML editor.
All developers (including PHP/JSP) can use this to build their HTML comps before making the site dynamic. Once it stabalizes it will definately give Dreamweaver a run for its money.
I'm sorry... How is following a set of standards "drinking the Koolaid"? Using MS tools for everything because management says it's "good policy" instead of using the right tool for the job is drinking the Koolaid (or at least management drank the Koolaid).
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
The Jonestown incident is the whole point: drinking the Kool-Aid is an act of unquestioning blind allegiance, with no critical thought involved. The reason it's such a popular expression is that you see so many people behaving this way, towards all sorts of things not worthy of such behavior, like companies, politicians, cars, you name it. As Mulder might put it, they want to believe... in something, anything.
To make ASP.NET programming you use Visual Studio Express or better. This app is nothing more than the evolution of Front Page. Yes, you can use it to insert ASP.NET controls but nothing more. You can use it to insert PHP server tags if you want. However, the purpose of this app is to make web pages, not web applications.
Using Dreamweaver's built in functionality to insert PHP snippets is not only foolish but discouraged. Using the Expression web designer to make ASP.NET apps is futile at best.
Where did you get "Largest company on the planet" from http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/18/06f2k_The-Forb es-2000_Rank.html/ frobes has them at 55 and IBM at 23.
C# as a language itself isn't so bad. Its just Java with a bit more C and some tags. The tool they pair it with, however, is absolute crap. Visual Studio's designer, in particular, generates abysmal code. Plus, its near impossible to get Visual Studio to work with _real_ source control - you are locked into their crappy tools for life. Give me Java's, Perl's, or C++'s freedom and community over that any day.
I make web sites for a living, and I will not use Dreamweaver. Every single time - without an exception - anytime I have come across a web site developed using Dreamweaver (or any WYSIWYG editors for that matter) it is based on junk code.
When I make web sites, they are always 95% - 100% XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant, so I now what I'm talking about. At work it slows us down tremendously when a web designer decides to deveop a site in Dreamweaver. It takes more time to fix things than to develop the whole site by hand. And I'll not even mention how long it takes to edit or add something new into the pages.
Until computers can literally think like humans can - and I truly believe they will, they will NEVER be able to produce web sites or computer programs at the same level of quality that a human can because it does not understand what the person is trying to do (e.g., establishing user-defined CSS classes).